Memories In Her Skin
by Silvara
Summary: The small glyph for honor was tattooed, (huge, shackling) on her hip. It's a memorial she had made along with the men and Shang felt a pang of jealousy as he traced its inked pattern. From her waist to her eyes, time has frozen, yet Shang sees only the beauty of the moment, the pleasure of intimacy. Basking in the strength of their bond, he explores. • Rewritten.


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A thin, almost feminine figure with a boyish gait slowly left the red silk of the bed sheets fall from her shoulders.

On the General's bed, Fa Mulan knelt up...but a masculine form gracefully sled to press a hand on her calve.

The day of their wedding had been a long winded and blurred course of events. Half duty, half performance, they had set into millennia long predefined roles to please their families and country traditions. The night had been a nervous struggle of confusing duty and contradictory feelings for both of them. It had taken time as bodies searched one another, to for them to find the pace of a possible harmony.

Now that Li Shang knew where he stood and what they would hope for, he didn't feel like parting from his partner. There were still uncharted territories to explore and if not here, in the intimacy of their marital bed, would there ever be time to do so?

Shang squeezed her ankle and made his way to stand in front of her, half seat by her tight, as he put his hands around the beginning of her hips.

 _"Don't rise, yet,"_ he whispered, his soft plea keening in the crease of his brows, _"You know I need you here still..."_ In the octaves, a faint sulking edge.

On Mulan's right side, the glyph for honor was tattooed on her waist; as a memorial she had made along with the men. The General felt a pang of jealousy as he traced the inked pattern.

He counted the blemish, the scars, the tiny testimonies of the courageous warrior she had been.

One of his hands absentmindedly fondling her waist, by his head, he remembered the first time she had won a bare hand fight against him back in camp and a proud smile etched itself on the face of her first and last Officer.

Li Shang didn't see Fa Mulan as his wife when he rose to his knees. Neither did he, when his eyes sled up to her face. _She was so much more than that._ More than a woman could be and closer than a brother—this truth he felt in almost every of his chakras. This unique human creature was everything he could have wished for and some more...

It was stranger than ever, to have someone like Fa Ping; both her heart and her body and her hand.

Her love was a gift he had never needed to deserve. Her loyalty felt like milk and honey and sun...her body, his body, simply felt like home.

Shang drifted toward her face without realizing it, breath ghosting against her lips, barely that he was slowly chanting her name.

 _It was luck,_ he told himself. _An unbelievable, gratuitous streak of luck_ that he didn't dare to call destiny if she had chosen him to be her husband; never motivated by his standing neither minding the little worth of his decisions...

Well, he would be damned if he didn't savor this fate.

Searching her eyes for a past image as her eyes searched his with an endearing confusion, with a smile, he gently lifted her hair out of her face; at least he found the picture that both parts of his soul yearned for.

His lips touched Ping's with utmost softness, grasping beyond skin and touch, embracing all that she was in a kiss, desire turning into pain at the tips of his fingers and the point of his lips as he cradled her into his arms, making love to her soul.

 _"Mulan,"_ he gasped, her name rolling on his tongue in a space of his consciousness, just beyond his control.

Her fingers curled in his scalp; biting, loving, yearning. Something broke on her face. In the corner of his sight, her face bloomed in a smile; genuine, this one last time.

Slowly, as it faded under the shadows of the ancestral bedroom of a General, the vast and old Empire of China began to define itself.

Much too soon, the rest of the world was blinking into existence again.

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 _Inspired by Ink by RPGgirl514._

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I've got a...more substantial Mulan story in the blocks, you know. No look, really: something dramatic, violent, sexy and a bit kinky of about 5000 words of a tale, this, wrapped in a feminist _ballad_ of sorts that I felt has always been begging to be written for this fandom...

Except that ...knowing myself, it's going to take eons to get online.

 _Anyway._ This was a glossed morning after moment; an apparently perfect instant of bliss for Mulan and Shang.

For Shang at least. ;)

I'm sorry that I know very little about Chinese culture, so I hope that nothing I wrote can be offensive. On the other hand, I can't afford to walk on eggs if I want to nurture inspiration, so I wouldn't mind to get your comment, advice, or opinion, _oh most precious reader~_


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